NU Solar

ASC ended yesterday at Naperville, Illinois after a lot of suspense right at the end. Our car broke down while it was still one and a half hours away from the finish line and had to be towed across a bridge before it was fixed. We made it Naperville with 6 minutes to spare!

This is our best EVER finish in the American Solar Challenge. We were also recognized at the awards ceremony for helping other teams get McMaster orders in to pass scrutineering.

All in all, a memorable event and we’d like to thank all the organizers and teams for making it possible.

We also had an outreach event this morning at the Museum of Science and Industry and put our car on display there. The Museum is awesome!

Wow. What a day. This has not been the smoothest day and it culminated in us not making our checkpoint at Alton, Illinois. We are currently 260 miles away from the stage stop and we need to cover that in about 7 hours. We will be up by dawn tomorrow morning trying to make sure the car gives us absolutely no issues on the road tomorrow so we can set a brisk pace on the road and give ourselves a legitimate chance of making the stage stop.

Max Willer and Kristin Landry will be the drivers in the hot seat. Let’s hope they can get us to Normal, Illinois on time and in one piece. (caravan?)

12:13 am

Day 4 has been NUsolar’s best day so far on the American Solar Challenge. The car worked reliably through the day and we lost very little time to stoppages. We made it to the end of the stage in Rolla, Missouri on time and about 2 hours before the stop closed. Missouri S&T’s field was the stage stop and they were nice enough to provide all the teams with dinner in the form of a barbecue. Thanks S&T!

We are expected to get to Alton, Illinois sometime tomorrow evening and we are hoping to start with a full capacity pack and make it there sometime in the evening before the checkpoint closes.

Max Willer and Jessica Sudo will probably be driving the car. Go NUsolar!

12:30 am

Phew! What a day! The team just got out of the Governer’s Garden in Jefferson city where we were debugging the electrical system. The day was rather frustrating with the array unwilling to work normally all day. We were rather delayed in getting to our checkpoint and we might decide against passing through the checkpoint in order to save some charging time for ourselves.

Most of the team is really tired right now but it’s an early start tomorrow to see if we can make it Rolla, our stage point. This could be our best ASC yet!

4:00 pm

This is the end of the 2nd day of the race and our trailer has gotten to the end of Stage 1 at the Ramada Inn. The car will probably be here in about half an hour or so. We are currently still ahead of Iowa State and Texas, Austin. Michigan is currently leading the pack. SUNY New Paltz caused some controversy earlier in the day by allegedly cutting off one of our vehicles, so we are unsure how that will play out.

The car’s battery pack is currently rather low and so we were forced to slow down. Hopefully, we can get the battery pack charged fully in our four hours of charging.

12:30 pm

Still holding 4th place. Trying to get on the radio with Kaohsiung University of Taiwan to see if they are planning to attempt ay pass.Speed limit’s up to 60! Should we go 60? Apparently not.

1:40 pm

We just got held up as a result of some electrical issues. But we are good now and we hope to gain some ground on the other teams.

2:10 pm

It has been relatively smooth sailing for the past half an hour. Hopefully it continues this way for a while!

2:45 pm
We just passed University of Texas and Iowa State University. Hopefully we can keep this up and get closer to the leaders by the end of the day. Best of luck to UT and Iowa with their cars.

6:00 pm

We had a good spell of racing from 3:00 pm- 5:00 pm. Arrived at the checkpoint at Neosho, MO at around 4:45 and left at 5:35. Hopefully we can race till around 6:25 and then find a decent place to stay. We are currently ahead of Iowa State and UT, Austin. Missouri and Kentucky are ahead of us by an hour or so. We are hoping for a less interrupted race day tomorrow, so we can get back on track. The electrical team and Dan put in a stopgap solution to ensure the electrical components in the battery protection circuit do not come loose again. We did some charging at Neosho, but we might need to do some more once the race day is over.

6:15 pm

We have just pulled over at the side of the road and the array stand is out. It’s time to go help the team charge. That’s the end of Day 1 !

Let's go NUsolar!

12:03 pm

And we’re off!

11:45 am

We are now at Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where the America Solar Challenge begins. We are also two team members lighter now. Advisor Dana Comolli and webmaster Michael Scherer have returned to Chicago. Their contributions to the team during FSGP were huge and we will miss them. Hopefully, we have the ASC trophy with us when we meet them next!

ABC recently aired a news clip featuring our car. It can be found at this link: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=resources/lifestyle_community/green&id=7506843

The car is ready to go and the team is pumped for the race to begin. We are now at T-15 minutes. The race begins at 12 pm at the Bass Pro shop here in Broken Arrow. Max Willer will be our first driver  on the race. The next checkpoint is Neosho, Missouri. Hopefully, we can make it there without any stops. We will be starting in 4th place behind University of Michigan, University of Bochum and the University of Minnesota. Phil Dziedzic, our fearless leader was interviewed a few minutes ago and hopefully this shows up on TV as well! The convoy is ready to go now with its stickers, first aid kit, cones and flags. We have the route books and our observer( a student from the University of Waterloo, whose team unfortunately could not make it to the race) is with us. Hopefully we pick up where we left off on the third day of the Grand Prix.  Let’s go NUsolar!

4:50 PM
We’re about to complete the FSGP in 4th place with well over 200 laps! Everyone is celebrating with some excellent cake provided by Kristin’s parents. Thanks so much!

4:18 PM
Just completed our 100th lap of the day!

Current Driver: Jess
Laps Today: 100
Laps Total: 266

4:00 PM
Car is back out there and running! Our batteries and array are performing extremely well. One hour to go!

3:42 PM
I definitely just jinxed it. Car is pulling over to the side of the road after apparently tripping. Might have something to due with the aux packs, which have been giving us some trouble recently.

3:36 PM
We’ve passed Calgary and are now in fourth place! The car has gone the entire day with no problems, at least so far. Most of the team is off right now helping with the support vehicle inspection that makes sure our lead and chase vans are adequately prepared and equipped for the American Solar Challenge.

2:59 PM
Another driver change, this time Jess goes in for Kristin. This should be our last hot pit of the day. All of our drivers will then have been in the car for more than 2 hours at a time, which is something they will have to get used to when we go cross country. The latest official standings also show we’ve come within a few miles of Calgary, and may have even already passed them. It should be a nice steady cruise to the finish.

2:00 PM
A quiet but breezy day on the track. We’re happy to see the car running so well. Furthermore, we’re now within 25 laps of catching Calgary.

Current Driver: Kristin
Laps Today: 70
Laps Total: 236

1:10 PM
Calgary apparently has a short supply of tires and has decided to call it a day in order to make sure they don’t run out while going cross country. This is great news for us – fourth place is definitely in reach. A lot of teams seem to be taking it easy today as there are only 6 or 7 cars on the track.

12:26 PM
Changing drivers now – Kristin is going in for Valerie. Kristin’s family is here to watch her and the rayce. We’re always happy to have some company. The car has been running smoothly all morning, hopefully that will stay true the rest of the day.

Still no sign of Missouri or Calgary on the track. As of 11 AM (the last official standings update), the gap between us and Calgary was only about 50 llaps.

Current Driver: Kristin
Laps Today: 47
Laps Total: 213

12:04 PM
Missouri hasn’t been out on the track today because they’re working on their parking brake. This means we’re now in sole possession of fifth place. Furthermore, Calgary took their car down toward their trailer earlier in the morning. If they stay off the track the rest of the day, we might have a shot at overtaking them for fourth!

Current Driver: Valerie
Laps Today: 45
Laps Total: 211

11:14 AM
Quick hot pit to get a bee out of the car! Don’t want anything distracting (or stinging) our drivers.

10:46 AM
Western Michigan is now out on the track! Apparently they changed their mind about giving up and figured everything out. Congratulations guys! We’re still racking up the miles, although we’ll probably hot pit and change drivers in an hour or so.

Current Driver: Valerie
Laps Today: 24
Laps Total: 190

9:53 AM
Car is running smoothly and we’ve got the telemetry dish set up. Valerie has just completed her 25th lap and qualified as a driver! Our team is now fully ready for the American Solar Challenge.

8:39 AM
We’re gearing up for another windy day here at the track. Now that we’ve qualified for the ASC, our main goal for today is to make sure that we qualify our last driver, Valerie. She only needs about 15 more laps, so that shouldn’t take very long. This is also our last chance to run the car and make sure that everything is ready to go for open road raycing.

The current standings have again been updated at the ASC website. Northwestern is tied for 5th place, with exactly the same number of laps as Missouri. It should be an exiting rayce to the finish.

Current Driver: Soon to be Valerie
Laps Today: 0
Laps Total: 166

-Michael Sherer

5:02 PM
Finished for the day! Come back tomorrow for more updates!

Current driver: n/a
Laps today: 102
Laps total: 165

4:25 PM
Jess qualified as a driver shortly after we did as a team, so Valerie is now in the car getting familiar with the track and starting to work on her 25 qualification laps.

4:07 PM
Northwestern has just qualified for the American Solar Challenge! Shortly after Jess got in the driver’s seat, we completed our 150th lap of the past two days. This means we will spend the next week racing across the Midwest before finishing in Chicago a week from Sunday!

2:36 PM
I just watched our left fairing door fall off on the course’s first straightaway. They’ve allowed us to continue racing anyway (no safety hazard, just an aerodynamics problem) so we’ll reattach it at the next pit stop.

2:11 PM
We’ve been keeping our speed down to about 28 mph since the last incident because we want to make sure the car is stable in the strong winds. Even so, we’re getting close to finishing our qualifying laps – we only have about 20 more to go. To see where everyone stands, check the midday update on the ASC homepage.

Current Driver: Max
Laps Today: 67
Laps Total: 130

1:31 PM
Everything’s fine. Heading back out onto the track momentarily.

12:51 PM
We just got a report from Max that the car was picked up momentarily by the wind. It stayed upright and everyone appears to be fine, but we’ve sent a team out to inspect the car and make sure no damage was done.

update: The car is driving back to the cold pit under its own power.

12:35 PM
We’re getting really impressive current out of our array. We were a bit worried because some of the numbers during our preliminary testing were quite low, however the numbers we’re getting are in line with last year. Not bad for a 2 year old array.

Current Driver: Max
Laps Today: 57 (only halfway through the day and only 6 short of yesterday’s total)
Laps Total: 120

12:03 PM
Most teams seem to be doing a lot better today. Texas and Calgary have spent some time in the pits, but a lot of teams are out there on the track. Unfortunately, Western Michigan has decided to drop out. We spent a fair amount of time with them and are sad to see them go. We wish them (and their pet duck) the best of luck in the future!

11:40 AM
Car is still running smoothly. We’re gonna keep Max in until we finish the 150 laps required to qualify, which should happen by about 1:30 PM closer to 2:15. Then we’ll switch out and keep getting our new drivers some experience.

Current Driver: Max
Laps Today: 43
Laps Total: 106

11:12 AM
It is very windy here today – our telemetry and blogging tent just blew over! Luckily the car is handling the winds better than us. Also, here’s a nice map of the track that we’re raycing on:

Current Diver: Max
Laps Today: 34
Laps Total: 97

10:40 AM
We’ve come in for a quick tire change, but otherwise its been smooth sailing this morning. Our telemetry dish amplifier is working very well, which is helping us better plan our strategy for the rest of the day.

Current Driver: Max
Laps Today: 25
Laps Total: 89

10:00 AM
Bochum just had a scary moment – their back wheels came off the ground. Luckily, they managed to stay on the course and not flip over. Amazingly, they are already back out on the track.

9:38 AM
Day 2 of FSGP is underway! We’ve decided to put our most experienced driver, Max, back in the car this morning so we can use our almost full battery power to go fast and power through the 87 laps we need to qualify the car for the American Solar Challenge (150 laps in two successive days will qualify a car). We’re about half an hour into the race now, and we’ve been running successfully so far. We’ve moved the telemetry system into a tent closer to the track and set up a dish to amplify the signal in hopes of getting better data.

We also have some good news from the other teams – Oregon State, Western Michigan, and Illinois state are all getting close to finishing scrutineering and joining everyone else out on the track!

Current Driver: Max
Laps Today: 4
Laps Total: 67

-Michael Sherer